Soochow University Political Science Assistant Professor Chen Fang-yu has recently attracted much attention due to his interaction with political figures, and his family background has also become a focus of discussion. His father, Chen Hui-bang, while serving as the president of Hsinchu University of Education, took advantage of cross-strait academic exchanges to privately set up Bank of China accounts to intercept public funds, involving occupational embezzlement and corruption. He was ultimately sentenced to 2 years in prison and deprived of public rights. This corruption case, which occurred in an educational institution with historical roots in the Japanese occupation era, is not only a painful lesson for the higher education circle but also sparked heated discussions among netizens in the current political atmosphere over the contrast between 'taking China's money and embezzling China's public funds' and political positions.
This is a public appeal letter regarding the plagiarism case of Lin Chih-chien's thesis, targeting his supervisor Chen Ming-tong, and calling for intervention by the Ministry of Education, the highest academic authority. The appellant accuses Chen Ming-tong of dereliction of duty during the supervision process, failing to fulfill his guidance and supervision responsibilities, and potentially being part of a 'collusive structural malpractice of perfunctoriness,' causing significant damage to the credibility of the academic community. It appeals to the Ministry of Education to investigate Chen Ming-tong and return the supervision fees or salary he acquired during the period he failed to fulfill his guidance responsibilities to the university, in order to maintain academic ethics and the fairness of the education system.
This article introduces the ‘Academic Ethics Regulations for Researchers’ and its supplementary documents, which were promulgated by the National Science Council (NSC, now the Ministry of Science and Technology) around 2012. The article emphasizes that academic research should be based on high self-regulation to earn societal trust, and notes that China then lacked clear academic ethics regulations. To address this, the NSC provided ‘Seven Explanations’ and ‘Regulations,’ covering researchers’ basic attitudes, data handling, co-author definitions, peer review, conflict of interest avoidance, and explicitly listing improper behaviors (fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, etc.). The article explains that the NSC used ‘misleading, severe’ as criteria for academic misconduct and reviews past cases, most of which involved plagiarism. However, the article concludes by stating that the links to these regulations have since been delisted by the Ministry of Science